ELV Launch: The AIM space- craft was successfully launched at 4:24 p.m. Wednesday from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California aboard a Pega- sus XL rocket. The AIM spacecraft will fly three instruments designed to study polar mesospheric clouds located at the edge of space, 50 miles above the Earth's surface in the coldest part of the planet's atmosphere. The mission's primary goal is to explain why these clouds form and what has caused them to become brighter and more numerous and appear at lower latitudes in recent years.

Earth, the 14th crew of the International Space Station, Commander Michael Lo- pez-Alegria and Flight Engineers Suni Williams and Mikhail Tyurin, set several records during their mission. Lopez- Alegria completed five spacewalks, which gave him a total of 10 for his ca- reer. This set a U.S. record for not only number of spacewalks, but also cumula- tive spacewalk time of 57 hours, 40 min- utes. He also set a U.S. record for a single spaceflight's duration with more than 215

ISS Update: Now returned to

Did You Know? Friday is Arbor Day. Ster- ling Morton, the originator of the Arbor Day idea, was among the many pioneers moving into the Nebraska Territory in 1854. With the decided lack of trees on the Nebraskan plains, Morton made it his cause to plant trees, not just for beautification but also to preserve the soil. He encouraged civic or- ganizations to join in the effort, proclaiming the first Arbor Day in 1872. Today, the most common date for observances is the last Fri- day in April.

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days. This tops the 196-day mark set by station crew members Dan Bursch and Carl Walz in 2001 and 2002. During the mission, Williams set the record for number of spacewalks and to- tal time spent on spacewalks by a woman. She participated in four space- walks for a total of 29 hours and 17 min- utes. Williams remains on the station for the first part of Expedition 15. Three of the crew's spacewalks were conducted over the course of nine days, an unprecedented schedule for a station crew. Starting from scratch, it takes about 100 crew-member hours to prepare for a spacewalk. By doing them a few days apart, considerable crew time can be saved by not having to repeat some of those preparatory steps.

Health Education and Wellness Program announces that its new Web site is now live. The new site is available on the World Wide Web and now can be ac- cessed from anywhere. You can bookmark the site at http://hewp.ksc.nasa.gov on your office, home and travel computers. Visit peri- odically for the latest monthly health top- ics, women’s health programming, cardiovascular disease screening forms, nutrition information and tools, health updates, KSC health-related events and programs, and much more. The HEWP office also asks you to please complete the HEWP feedback sur- vey to let it know how it is doing and what it can do to meet your health infor- mation needs.

HEWP Web Site Live — The KSC

NASA Update: NASA has modi- fied its contract with Lockheed Martin Corp. of Littleton, Colo., to design, test and build the Orion crew exploration ve- hicle. The updated contract contains three significant changes. Two years have been added to the design phase. Two test flights of Orion's launch abort system have been added. Production of a pressur- ized cargo carrier for the International Space Station has been deleted from the initial design phase. NASA continues working to ensure a smooth transition from the Space Shuttle Program to the Constellation Program. This is demonstrated in a fourth element of the contract modification that provides for use of surplus raw materials, such as aluminum-lithium ingots now used in the construction of space shuttle fuel tanks, for Orion. The modification reflects con- tinuing progress on Orion's development, including program formulation and sys- tems assessments addressing the rocket, ground infrastructure and all other ele- ments necessary for a successful first launch. The period of performance now matches the evolving NASA budget land- scape.

Reminder — The Indian River

Bridge will be reduced to one lane of traffic from 8:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. today.

Count down is published every Tuesday & Thurs- day for NASA KSC employees. Deadlines are